


you’re not a demon, there’s a reason you behaved in that way.

by crankgameplays



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Murder TW, Post-Canon Fix-It, Three Years Post Canon, a look into ash’s guilt, all lowercase letters, ash has ptsd and a healthy dose of survivors guilt, ash lynx is alive, just the talk of it though no one actually dies, no beta we die like men, the way they love each other is a physical ache for me, vomit tw, why do i enjoy putting ash through pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:56:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26371555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crankgameplays/pseuds/crankgameplays
Summary: “all their blood, on my hands. how do you not see it?” ash lifts his head to stare at eiji, desperate and in pain. “why can’t you see it, eiji?!”-a fic looking into ash’s survivor guilt, and how eiji helps him deal with it.
Relationships: Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji
Comments: 3
Kudos: 115





	you’re not a demon, there’s a reason you behaved in that way.

ash wakes up to bile so thick in his throat that he barely makes it to the bathroom. he coughs violently into the toilet, his back arching unintentionally as he heaves. tears drip down his face without his consent, his hands gripping the side of the toilet so hard that his knuckles turn white.

the dinner eiji had made for him doesn’t taste as good coming back up. 

he wipes his mouth off on the back of his hand, spitting into the toilet as he flushes it. he leans his sweaty forehead on the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl, and forces his fluttering heart to calm down. 

sometimes he wonders if it would be better if his heart just stopped. it wouldn’t repay all the lives he’s taken, but it would probably make the world a safer place. one less murderer to walk around with them. 

“ash?” he hears a soft voice ask by the door of the bathroom, and he lifts his heavy head to give eiji a weak smile. 

“hey, birdie,” he greets, his stomach rolling at the side of his boyfriend. he looks so soft, his hair sleep rumpled, wearing one of ash’s shirts and a pair of boxers. 

too soft for hands as bloody as ash’s. 

“hi, honey,” eiji smiles softly down at him, then pads into the bathroom and sits down next to ash. he doesn’t touch; he never does, without ash’s permission. he fights back a yawn. “are you okay?” 

“ah,” ash reaches a hand up to scratch absently at his neck, all too aware of how awful he looks right now. he wonders if eiji sees blood whenever he sees ash’s hands. 

he knows he doesn’t, but he almost wishes that he did. ash- ash is a  _monster_.  the amount of people he’s hurt, the amount of people he’s killed - an image of shorter, laughing brightly with his eyes twinkling behind his glasses - flashes through ash’s mind so quickly that it hurts. he avoids eiji’s question with another round of vomiting, a soft sob wracking his frame. his friend, his best friend- his blood now lies on ash’s hands, and a cushy new life in japan won’t wash it away. 

nothing ever could. 

“oh, ash,” eiji’s voice is so soft that it’s painful, and ash can’t bare to look at him, because he knows the look that will be in eiji’s eyes. pure, unfiltered love. he doesn’t deserve it, but god does he  _ want  _ it. 

“i’m a monster, eiji,” he whispers into the toilet bowl. his eyes are closed tightly, but he can hear the soft ‘plop, plop, plop’ as tears sneak through his eyelids and drop into the toilet bowl. he wonders how many people cried over the lives he took. 

he knows eiji is one of them. 

“you are not,” the fierceness in eiji’s voice should be surprising, but he always gets like this when ash is upset and talks badly about himself. “you are no such thing.” 

“i’ve killed so many people, eiji. so, so many. gang members, fox, lao, sh-“ he chokes on shorters name, a sob ripping so violently through his chest he has to cough his way through it.  “ _shorter_ ,”  he forces himself to shudder out the name, his grip on the toilet becoming painful. “all their blood, on my hands. how do you not see it?” he lifts his head to stare at eiji, desperate and in pain. “ _why can’t you see it, eiji_?!” he needs to know. he  has  to know. he _has_ to know how eiji, sweet, precious eiji, can look at ash and see anything less than the devil himself. eiji, who buys extra fish just to feed the stray cats that wander through their garden. eiji, who cries every time someone dies in a tv show. eiji, who holds on to ash like he’s fine china and ready to break at a moments notice. how can someone so beautiful, so pure, love someone so despicable like the lynx himself?

“oh, ash,” eiji’s voice is soft, gentle and patient, and he raises his hand to hover uncertainly in the air between them. 

ash nods reluctantly. it’s not that he doesn’t want eiji’s touch - he craves it. and it disgusts him. eiji shouldnt soil himself by coming into contact with ash, but ash  _ needs  _ it. he’ll fall apart without it, shatter into a million shards of glass, just as rough and sharp as his heart is. he needs it to feel alive, to remind himself that his heart still beats and his chest still moves. that he’s still human. 

eiji doesn’t hesitate to pull ash into his lap, his arms wrapping tightly around him. ash goes boneless, his head dropping to eiji’s chest.  _thump, thump, thump_ ,  the sound of the heartbeat against his ear forces him to relax. eiji is still alive, and that’s more than ash could ever ask for. he remembers the warmth of eiji’s blood on his hands, the scream that tore itself out of his throat, the rattling of his body as he emptied bullet after bullet into the two boys that had shot him. 

two more boys who’s future he had ripped away. playing god, passing judgement, deciding who gets to live and who has to die. who gave him the right? who the fuck did he think he was? a scared teenager full of rage and desperation, but no god. tears drip on to ash’s arms, steady and warm. 

“the fact you feel this way about yourself just proves you’re a good person, ash,” eiji talks softly, his lips pressed gently against the top of ash’s head. “no monster would feel remorse. you do- you feel it in every inch of your body. every day, you mourn the lives of the people you lost. you remember them. you were just a kid, ash,” his hands are gentle as he pushes ash’s sleep shirt up just slightly so he can make contact with ash’s skin. it had taken so long for him to be able to do that without setting ash off, but now it helps. the warmth and weight of eiji’s fingers pressed against his back help ground him, like a tether holding him to earth. 

“how do- how am i supposed to do this, eiji?” his voice cracks. “how do i keep on living knowing that i took that chance from so many people?” 

“day by day,” eiji says simply. “you can not bring them back, my dear ash. you just must not forget them,” eiji’s tone is gentle. he doesn’t want ash to remember that he killed them. he just wants ash to keep them alive in their mind, so that even though they’re dead, they’ll be able to live in ash’s memory. ash doesn’t think he has that right. how cruel that is. how cruel eiji’s forgiveness is, to forgive a murderer on behalf of their victims. 

how sick and twisted is that? 

“you shouldn’t forgive me, eiji. how the fuck could you forgive me for what i’ve done? how can anyone?” he lifts his head to look at eiji’s eyes, his own burning with anger. “i’m not- i’m just playing pretend, with you. every day i walk down the streets, and these people have no idea they’re walking next to a murderer. they’d never forgive me. no one would. how can you?” 

eiji leans forward to press a gentle kiss to ash’s forehead, and despite himself, he closes his eyes. eiji’s affection is always so soft, sweet like the mochi that’s always a constant in their freezer. it’s always so delicate, and it does nothing but make ash’s entire being ache with the love he has for eiji. there is nothing, no one in this world, that he loves more than eiji. he  _ is  _ ash’s world. eiji promised him his soul all those years ago, and ash has spent the rest of their time together giving his in return. eiji is the reason ash still lives and breathes. the reason he dragged himself to a hospital all those years ago, got himself stitched up and healed so that he could come back to eiji, so he could live a life that he didn’t deserve with the person he loved.

ash loves eiji so fiercely that he has no choice to listen to his words.

“because i know who you are. i have seen who you choose to be,” his hand lightly comes to settle on ash’s cheek, tilting his head up so that eiji can study his face. “you did not have a choice, ash. you realize that, do you not? there were few options given to you in that life, and you chose the only ones that would allow you to live. allow you to keep me safe. and every day i am grateful for it, because it means now i have the chance to spend the rest of  _ this  _ life with you. you walked down the wrong path, ash,” eiji gently brushes a string of hair off of ash’s cheek. it was getting long. ash would have to cut it soon. “but you realized that, and turned around to find a new one. how could i not forgive you, ash? i love you.” 

the words get stuck in ash’s throat, sticky and pounding against his ribcage, like butterflies trying to force themselves out. they were always hard for ash to say. everyone he loved died - shorter, skip, jennifer, griffin. it felt like placing a curse on eiji, to say those words aloud. sometimes he wishes he could just cut himself open, break apart his ribcage and bare his soul to eiji so that he could see just how much ash truly did love him. if there was one thing eiji deserved, it was to know just how much ash loved him. 

“i love you too,” he forces the words out and the stickiness dissipates, melting sweetly like honey on his tongue. he had never meant anything more in his life. 

eiji’s fingertips glide up and down ash’s spine, absently tapping against the bones pressed against flesh. ash desperately, for once in his life, wants to feel eiji’s touch everywhere. not sexually- despite the three years they’ve spent together, ash still hasn’t been able to bring himself to it. eiji was attractive, and ash loved every inch of him, but the thought of sex still made him feel sick. they were working on it. no, ash just needed to feel eiji’s warmth pressed against him. he needs to remember the fact that eiji loves him, despite how dirty he is. he needs the touch to help his skin contain his skeleton, or he thinks he might burst without it. eiji’s touch burns in the most pleasant way possible, keeping down everything that consistently simmers under his skin. 

“did you want to kill them?” eiji asks suddenly, his other hand coming up to cradle the back of ash’s head. 

“what?” ash startles so violently that he almost falls out of eiji’s lap, his only saving grace being eiji’s hand gently holding on to his side to keep him where he is. “no-what? no, of course i didn’t, eiji, how could you say that?” 

panic settles somewhere in ash’s bone, the dawning realization that maybe this is it. maybe this is where eiji will finally realize just how much of a monster ash is. 

“then how could you be awful?” eiji’s voice alone is enough to calm the hummingbirds beating against ash’s chest, and the fact that he’s still touching him is a good sign. “you would be awful if you had wanted their deaths. but you didn’t, you only did what you were forced to do. you played the game of survival, my dearest. those men knew what they were getting into. you never killed an innocent,” eiji’s hand finds ash and brings it to his lips, kissing his knuckles gently. “your hands may be covered in blood, but so were theirs. would you think me a monster if i had killed?” 

“no! never,” ash’s answer was resolute, and he knew that eiji had him trapped. eiji almost  _ had  _ killed for him, and the guilt that ash feels for that has diminished significantly since they had gotten together.  _i’m a grown man, ash. i made my choice all those years ago and i’ve never regretted it since then_ ,  eiji’s words repeat in the back of his mind, words he had spoken over and over again until they had finally sunk in. 

“i love you,” eiji says it like a promise and ash drinks it in, like he’s drowning and eiji’s words are the only form of air he’s ever had. it fills his body, warms him down to his core, the absolute certainty in his voice and unmistakeable fondness in his eyes settling the disgust seeping into his bones. “and we will get through this. you and i, as we always have. you are not irredeemable, ash.” 

ash doesn’t want to fight anymore. he could sit on this bathroom floor explaining how awful he is until the sun rose and sank again, and eiji would always have a counter argument for it. his throat is raw from stomach acid, and it hurts to talk. he doesn’t want to talk anymore; it’s useless anyways. he reaches his hand up to tangle his fingers in eiji’s hair and push him down at the same time that he pulls himself up, their lips meeting somewhere in the middle. the kiss fills him with cotton candy, sweet and warm, and love settles into his stomach and spreads its greedy grip through his whole body. 

“i love you,” ash whispers into the kiss, and eiji laughs against his mouth. 

“and i, you, my dear aslan.” 

the sun rises to the sight of two boys, one broken but not beyond repair, and the other holding him together, falling even more in love in each other’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> ahhh i just love them so much :(( if u want more bfish content i have a social media au ongoing sbout them! follow me on twitter nd let’s cry over rhem :( 
> 
> twitter: @codenameaslan


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